Although their information is often scant all have a firm grip on the realities of power. In interviews, opposition leaders stress their determination to join the battle against terrorism, though those speaking English usually pronounce the word as “tourism”. “I have been fighting against tourism in Afghanistan for 24 years,” one commander told us stoutly.So many Afghans live close to or below subsistence level that it would not take much to reduce them to starvation. Life in the Panjshir Valley, as in much of Afghanistan, is medieval in the real sense of the word. There is no electricity, clean water supplies, sewage or health systems.

Children have not been immunised against diseases such as TB, polio, diphtheria or measles for four or five years.Ordinary Afghans show interest but little excitement over the international crisis centred on their country. This is because they have been at war for almost a quarter of a century. In any case, many Afghans, though badgered by journalists for their political views, have interests which have nothing to do with the possible US invasion.The Western stereotype of the Afghan male pictures him either as a sturdy mountain warrior, a starving refugee or a religious fanatic. In the midst of hunger and war, the Afghans maintain a touching obsession with flowers.

You see them planted and carefully watered in the front line and on patches of ground beside the road in impoverished, dusty villages.Abdullah Abdullah , the foreign minister of the Northern Alliance, gives his press conferences in the splendid garden of a government guest house, which is filled with carefully tended orange, pink and scarlet flowers.The gardener in charge is determined to show his blooms to television viewers around the world. At the last press conference he first placed a large jug of them on the table in front of Mr Abdullah. This was rapidly removed to make way for reporters’ microphones.Undaunted the gardener then tied a bouquet of pink flowers to a sapling just behind the minister’s head until an officious security man told him to take them away.. Nasir Ahmad looked stunned as he squatted in the dust yesterday at Jalozai refugee camp, with only a piece of sacking to keep off the 35C heat. But perhaps he was just hungry – he confessed later that since he and his family fled Kabul for Pakistan three days earlier, they had eaten only once. Nasir Ahmad looked stunned as he squatted in the dust yesterday at Jalozai refugee camp, with only a piece of sacking to keep off the 35C heat.

But perhaps he was just hungry – he confessed later that since he and his family fled Kabul for Pakistan three days earlier, they had eaten only once.
Nasir is only 19, but he has been head of the family since his father, Maruf, was killed six years ago. Maruf used to run a vegetable stall in a market in Kabul, and his older son would help him outside school hours. “I was there when a rocket hit the market, and a piece of metal killed him,” said Nasir “I put his body in our pushcart and took it home. I said to our mother, Madina, ‘My father is dead’.” Next to him, Madina, who says she is about 45 but looks much older, simply nods in confirmation.That was the end of Nasir’s meagre education. He had to take the pushcart and seek work in the market to keep his mother, his 10-year-old brother Fahim, who sat wordlessly beside him, and his sister, Marufa, who at six was too young to understand the disaster that had befallen them, and had gone off to play with the other children in the camp.The year after Maruf was killed, the Taliban swept into Kabul and drove out the warring mujahedin factions which had reduced the Afghan capital to a ruin Nasir said: “Life did not change much for us. We are ordinary people.” He made just enough in the market for the family to manage, but the family did not have enough money for a television or any of the other amusements the Taliban was so keen to stamp out, such as cinemas and music tapes.”If you shaved you could be put in prison for a week, but I was too young to have much of a beard,” Nasir said wryly.